Environmental films to show at both shores of Lake Tahoe

Earth Day celebrations will get an early start at both shores of Lake Tahoe this week, with environmental films showing in South Lake Tahoe and Incline Village Friday.

Lake of the Sky Outfitters, the Sierra Nevada Alliance and the League to Save Lake Tahoe will show "Chasing Ice" at Lake Tahoe Community College's Duke Theatre Friday evening.

The 75-minute film follows photographer James Balog has he documents climate change in the Arctic Circle.

"Chasing Ice is the story of one man's mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet," according to a description of the film. "Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers.

"As the debate polarizes America and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Balog finds himself at the end of his tether. Battling untested technology in subzero conditions, he comes face to face with his own mortality. It takes years for Balog to see the fruits of his labor. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Chasing Ice depicts a photographer trying to deliver evidence and hope to our carbon-powered planet."

Doors open to the showing at 6:30 p.m., with the presentation starting at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students and free for children under 12. Tickets are available at Lake of the Sky Outfitters, the Sierra Nevada Alliance and the League to Save Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe Community College is located at 1 College Way in South Lake Tahoe.

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At the North Shore, the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences at Sierra Nevada College will host a Sustainability Film Festival Friday. The festival will include showings of "Divide in Concord" and "Watermark."

"Divide in Concord is a feature-length documentary that follows the entertaining tale of banning bottled water in small town America," according to a description of the film from producers.

"In 1775, Concord patriots fired the infamous 'shot heard round the world' that began a Revolution and defined a nation. Now a local eighty-four year-old woman has waged another seemingly unwinnable battle. For three years Jean Hill has been trying to rid the town of single-serve plastic bottles of water. Complete with strong opposition from local merchants and the bottled water industry, Jean is once again leading the controversial crusade."

"Watermark" documents humans complex interactions with water.

"The film brings together diverse stories from around the globe about our relationship with water: how we are drawn to it, what we learn from it, how we use it and the consequences of that use," according to a description of the film. "We see massive floating abalone farms off China's Fujian coast and the construction site of the biggest arch dam in the world – the Xiluodu, six times the size of the Hoover. We visit the barren desert delta where the mighty Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean, and the water-intensive leather tanneries of Dhaka. We witness how humans are drawn to water, from the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach to the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, where thirty million people gather for a sacred bath in the Ganges at the same time. We speak with scientists who drill ice cores two kilometers deep into the Greenland Ice Sheet, and explore the sublime pristine watershed of Northern British Columbia."

The film festival begin at 6:30 p.m. with music by Tom Letson. Both films start at 7:15 p.m. The event is free. The Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences is located at 291 Country Club Drive in Incline Village.